Authorities Say They've Arrested a 'Serial Killer' in Massachusetts Who Preyed on the Vulnerable By KC Baker 23

A Massachusetts man convicted of killing two men more than a decade ago — and recently accused of killing two others — is being labeled a “serial killer” by authorities.

Kevin Lino, 38, of Lowell, is already serving time for the murders of Normand Varieur in Boston in 2012, and Jack Gilbert Berry in Missoula, Mont. in 2014, Boston 25 News reports.

In August, Lino — who, like Varieur and Berry, was experiencing homelessness — was charged with murder in connection with the deaths of two other men experiencing homelessness in Massachusetts, the Middlesex District Attorney’s Office said in a statement.

“Mr. Lino is a serial killer,” District Attorney Marian Ryan told Boston 25 News. “The Department of Justice defines a serial killer as someone who has taken the life of two individuals in separate situations. In this case we have already convictions in two. We’ve now brought charges in two more.”

Lino, however, doesn’t seem to be connected to the series of slayings and deaths across New England that sparked rumors of a serial killer earlier this year. Since March, the remains of more than 10 women have been found in Connecticut, Massachusetts and Rhode Island. Police have said they don’t believe these deaths are related and that some are not deemed suspicious.

In the new accusations against Lino, prosecutors allege that when he was 23, he beat Gary Melanson, 54, to death with a baseball bat at a homeless encampment in Lowell in 2010 where they were both living.

Investigators later learned that Lino allegedly attacked Melanson because he was continuing to light fires to keep himself warm after Lino told him not to do so, prosecutors alleged in the statement.

Lino felt that the fires drew attention from police and the fire department, with which he did not want contact, according to prosecutors.

When Melanson apparently defied him, Lino “rushed the victim, who was much smaller and older than the defendant, and struck him repeatedly with a metal baseball bat, killing him,” prosecutors said in the statement.

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Six years later, investigators linked Lino to the 2012 death of another man, Douglas Leon Clarke, 30, in Cambridge, the district attorney’s statement alleges.

At the time, Clarke died of what appeared as an accidental overdose of a mix of drugs including morphine, codeine, ethanol and gabapentin, an anticonvulsant medication. No foul play was initially suspected.

In 2018, investigators learned that Lino had been living in the same homeless encampment as Clarke near the Harvard Square MTBA station.

Lino, they learned, was allegedly angry that heroin users were living in the encampment anymore and began trying to oust them, according to the statement.

Now authorities believe Lino killed Clarke by intentionally giving him a fatal dose of heroin in what is referred to as a “hot shot,” according to the statement.

Authorities say there could be more victims, Boston 25 News reports.